


You Must Be This Tall to Punch a Werewolf

by sarahgene12



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Al is a scaredy cat, Corn Mazes, Gen, Halloween, and Sam is a little kid, this was just for fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 00:16:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8423305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahgene12/pseuds/sarahgene12
Summary: Sam and Al go to a Halloween festival that Al suspects they're a little old for. Sam finds the corn maze.





	

“What are we doin’ here, Sam?” Al stood just outside the festival entrance with his arms crossed, looking cold and extremely skeptical. 

Sam threw his arms open wide. “Just look at this place, Al! It looks just like the place we used to go when I was a kid!”   
Al rolled his eyes. “Yeah, about that. Is it a requirement to be under four feet tall, or are we a little bit old to be here?”   
Sam ignored him and marched off, whipping his head back and forth so fast, trying to take it all in at once, that Al thought he was going to get whiplash.   
“Look, Sam, these rides have a height limit! This thing’s for kids! What’re we sposta do at a place for—”  
“Aaaaal….” 

Sam had stopped in front of a vendor selling caramel apples. A toothy grin split his face from ear to ear, and despite his irritation, Al couldn’t help but smile a little himself.   
“What’s the matter, you want a candy apple? Well let’s see, I don’t know, lemme check if I got enough dimes saved up from my paper route, we might be able to afford one—” but Sam was shaking his head, unbothered by Al’s sarcasm. 

“No not that! Look!” He pointed upwards, behind him.   
Al looked. “A corn maze? Oh, Sam, you gotta be joking.”   
“No, really! It could be fun!” Sam grabbed Al by the elbow and pulled him past the apple booth, until they were both standing at the mouth of the maze.   
“Hey! Now, calm down, would ya? I swear sometimes all that leapin’ around bounced you back about 30 years, Sam. You’re like Tom Hanks in that movie, ’cept you don’t look no different. Just a big kid.” 

Sam pulled a face, stepping closer to the edge of the maze. “Aw, c’mon, Al! You’re not scared, are you? Like you said, this place is for kids! What could possibly be in there that could scare a strong, stoic, decorated soldier like you, huh?”

Al puffed his chest out, just a little. Sam watched him, wearing the expression Al called his ‘sick puppy look’. It always worked.   
Al sighed, holding up a hand indicating that he was going to go first. “Okay, Sammy, you win. I’ll even go ahead of you, okay?”  
“My hero,” Sam teased. He fell in step behind Al, as the night and the tall stalks of corn swallowed them whole.

 

“Al, where are you? I can’t see a thing!”  
“I don’t know, Sammy, I think I’m a coupla feet ahead of you.”  
“Do you see anything yet?”  
“Nah, I think they forgot the goons, there’s nothin’ in here!” 

Al tiptoed forward, hands outstretched, squinting in the complete darkness. 

Sam unknowingly copies his movements, reaching out with both hands at what he thinks is empty air. His fingers brush over something smooth.   
“SAM!” Al whirls in the dark, lashing out with two fists. One connects solidly with Sam’s shoulder. The other flies through a clump of corn stalks and sends whispers of silk snowing down on the pair of them. 

“Al! Al! It’s just me! I’m right here! Al!” Sam feels for and eventually finds Al’s narrow shoulders, and holds him still with two strong hands. He can feel and hear how hard his friend is breathing.   
“Hey. Al. You okay?” Sam leans in closer to where he thinks Al’s face is. 

“Oh, Sam! Is that you? Aw, jeez. Jeez, I thought there was somebody in here after all, and I can’t tell my noggin from my—”  
“Fine, fine! Uh, try and keep close. You could, uh, here, grab ahold of my arm and we’ll just, we’ll go slow, okay?”

“That’s a slick way to try and hold my hand, Sam.”   
“Al.”  
“Okay! I’ve got it. Just go real slow, okay?”  
“I will. Ready?”   
“Ready.” 

 

“Look! Look, over there, there’s light! That’s gotta be the exit!” Al’s voice comes suddenly from somewhere just behind and to the left of Sam, and the latter haphazardly disguises a jolt of surprise by quickening his pace.   
“See, Al? We made it! No big deal, huh?”  
“Yeah, yeah, no big deal. Just keep walkin’, will ya?” 

Sam moves boldly forward, feeling Al’s hand wrapped tightly around his wrist, and squeezing hard. He opens his mouth to point out this fact when suddenly a tall figure leaps out of the cornstalks to his right, wearing a werewolf mask and wielding an obviously plastic scythe. The costumed joker lets out a howl, and lunges at Al.   
It’s still too dark to see much of anything, but Sam hears Al yell, feels the grip on his wrist cease, and hears an unfamiliar, muffled voice cry out in obvious pain. 

“Run, Sam! Run!”   
Sam feels more than sees Al book it for the end of the maze, no more than a shaking, lurching silhouette in the otherwise complete darkness. He follows at a jog, wondering what happened to the werewolf. 

He reaches the mouth of the maze, and stops. “Al? Al, where are you?”   
A moment of silence. Then: “Sam?”   
“Al?”   
“Over here, Sam. Behind the, uh, the wheelbarrow.”  
“The— oh. What’re you doing, Al?” 

Sam crouched down beside a wheelbarrow, filled to capacity with grinning pumpkins. Al was hunkered down behind it, looking sheepish.   
“Did anybody see that?”   
Sam frowned. “What, you running out of there? I didn’t even see you— Al, what happened in there? You got really spooked!”  
Using the mound of pumpkins as leverage, Al stood, wincing as both knees pop loudly. 

“Uh, yeah, he-he, I guess I did, didn’t I? I didn’t see that guy comin’! Did you see him comin’? He just popped right outta there, like a, like a—like a big stupid jack in the box! Or-or somethin’.” He turned back towards the maze. “Jeez, you think he’s okay?”  
Sam helps him out from behind the wheelbarrow, with a steadying hand at his elbow. They’d taken a couple steps together, back towards the entrance of the fair, before Sam realized what Al had said. 

“Why wouldn’t he be okay?”

Again, Al wouldn’t look at him, staring instead at his shoes. Sam moved in front of him and stood, hands on hips.   
“Al. What did you do?”  
Al started towards the entrance, chuckling a little nervously.   
“Al!” 

Sam called for him, catching up easily.   
“Ah, it was no big deal, Sam! All I did was, when he jumped outta the corn, it surprised me is all, so I just—well I punched him.”   
“You punched him.”  
“Right on the honker. Yeah.”

Sam couldn’t help it. He laughed, his mind already spinning the picture of Al, so freaked by the darkness and the possibility of a spook that he clocks some poor teenager in a mask in the face. The guy was probably still in there somewhere, reeling from what was no doubt a hard hit and completely confused.   
“Sam! It’s not funny!” Al was whining, apparently so fueled by indignation and embarrassment that Sam almost had to jog again to keep up with him.   
“Oh c’mon Al! Hey! C’mon, it is funny! Hey!” He stopped Al in his tracks with a strong hand on his shoulder. Al had an expression on his face like a little kid who’d been the first one found in hide ‘n’ seek. 

“Look, you made all this big deal about not bein’ scared, about this whole thing being for kids, and making fun of me for wanting to go in the first place, and the first sign of monsters and you come out swinging! That’s funny!” Sam could barely get the words out, still in the breathless throes of laughter. 

Al sighed, digging in the pockets of his jacket for a cigar. He found one, and lit it, before he spoke again. “Yeah, you keep hyuckin’ it up, country boy. You see what happens come Christmas and I decide I don’t wanna put the star on the top of the tree. Huh? Who’s gonna be the big man and climb up the ladder?” 

Sam stopped laughing. For a split second, he looked marginally wounded. Then Al winked. 

“I’m just kiddin’, Sammy. We’ll get a real little tree this year, if my knees can’t take the climb. A real small one. Shorter than Gushie.”   
Sam grinned, shaking his head. “Oh, Al. C’mon, let’s go home and see if your knees are up to jumpin’ out of the bushes. You can scare some more teenagers without hittin’ them, okay?”   
“I like the sound of that.”


End file.
